Marian
Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s
Defense Fund (CDF),
has been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans for her
entire professional life. Under her leadership, CDF has become
the
nation’s strongest voice for children and families.
The mission of the Children’s Defense Fund is to Leave
No Child Behind® and to ensure every child a Healthy
Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a
Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful
passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and
communities.
Mrs. Edelman, a graduate of Spelman
College and Yale Law School, began her career in the mid-60s
when, as the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi
Bar, she directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational
Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1968, she moved
to Washington, D.C., as counsel for the Poor People’s
Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began organizing
before his death. She founded the Washington Research Project,
a public interest law firm and the parent body of the Children’s
Defense Fund. For two years she served as the Director of
the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University and
in 1973 began CDF.
Mrs. Edelman served on the Board of Trustees of Spelman
College, which she chaired from 1976 to 1987, and was the
first woman elected by alumni as a member of the Yale University
Corporation, on which she served from 1971 to 1977. She
has received many honorary degrees and awards including
the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the Heinz Award,
and a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship. In 2000, she
received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s
highest civilian award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime
Achievement Award for her writings which include seven books:
Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change; The
Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours;
Guide My Feet: Meditations and Prayers on Loving and Working
for Children; Stand for Children; Lanterns: A Memoir of
Mentors; Hold My Hand: Prayers for Building a Movement to
Leave No Child Behind; and I’m Your Child,
God: Prayers for Our Children.
She is a board member of the Robin Hood
Foundation, the Association to Benefit Children, City Lights
School, and Outward Bound, and is a member of the Council
on Foreign Relations, the American Philosophical Society,
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute
of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
Marian Wright Edelman is married
to Peter Edelman, a Professor at Georgetown Law School.
They have three sons, Joshua, Jonah, and Ezra, and two granddaughters,
Ellika and Zoe.
